Let it not be said that Syria's State of Emergency hasn't been in place for a long time. Since 1963 in fact. That is what many Syrians now want removed or lifted - and which the President did not when addressing the nation today.
David W. Lesch, a professor of Middle East history at Trinity University, is the author of “The New Lion of Damascus: Bashar al-Asad and Modern Syria.”. Writing an op-ed piece in The New York Times, Lesch provides an insight into the Syrian President.
"Will he be like his father, Hafez al-Assad, who during three decades in power gave the security forces virtually a free hand to maintain order and sanctioned the brutal repression of a violent Islamist uprising in the early 1980s? Or will he see this as an opportunity to take Syria in a new direction, fulfilling the promise ascribed to him when he assumed the presidency upon his father’s death in 2000?
Mr. Assad’s background suggests he could go either way. He is a licensed ophthalmologist who studied in London and a computer nerd who likes the technological toys of the West; his wife, Asma, born in Britain to Syrian parents, was a banker at J. P. Morgan. On the other hand, he is a child of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the cold war. Contrary to American interests, he firmly believes Lebanon should be within Syria’s sphere of influence, and he is a member of a minority Islamic sect, the Alawites, that has had a chokehold on power in Syria for decades."
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"The world is strewn with unemployed dictators who blamed “a plot” and nameless “enemies” for their country’s problems.
Yet when President Bashar al-Assad did just that in his long-awaited speech to the nation today, he was exhibiting a typically Syrian conspiratorial mindset, one that will sway those of his citizens who were already primed to believe him. This, however, totally denies the genuine socio-economic, political and personal frustration of ordinary Syrians that generated the protests to begin with.
President Assad spoke of some reforms in a disappointingly ambiguous manner that is unlikely to quell the demonstrations. No one denies the difficulty of announcing, much less carrying out, serious reforms in a country like Syria. Certainly, Mr. Assad would have to bargain with a variety of the country’s powerful established interests to get anything done. But he had the opportunity with this speech to build up a critical mass of public support for reform before a critical mass of opposition forms against him that would make anything he says too little, too late.
Sadly, he did not do so."
David W. Lesch, a professor of Middle East history at Trinity University, is the author of “The New Lion of Damascus: Bashar al-Asad and Modern Syria.”. Writing an op-ed piece in The New York Times, Lesch provides an insight into the Syrian President.
"Will he be like his father, Hafez al-Assad, who during three decades in power gave the security forces virtually a free hand to maintain order and sanctioned the brutal repression of a violent Islamist uprising in the early 1980s? Or will he see this as an opportunity to take Syria in a new direction, fulfilling the promise ascribed to him when he assumed the presidency upon his father’s death in 2000?
Mr. Assad’s background suggests he could go either way. He is a licensed ophthalmologist who studied in London and a computer nerd who likes the technological toys of the West; his wife, Asma, born in Britain to Syrian parents, was a banker at J. P. Morgan. On the other hand, he is a child of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the cold war. Contrary to American interests, he firmly believes Lebanon should be within Syria’s sphere of influence, and he is a member of a minority Islamic sect, the Alawites, that has had a chokehold on power in Syria for decades."
****
"The world is strewn with unemployed dictators who blamed “a plot” and nameless “enemies” for their country’s problems.
Yet when President Bashar al-Assad did just that in his long-awaited speech to the nation today, he was exhibiting a typically Syrian conspiratorial mindset, one that will sway those of his citizens who were already primed to believe him. This, however, totally denies the genuine socio-economic, political and personal frustration of ordinary Syrians that generated the protests to begin with.
President Assad spoke of some reforms in a disappointingly ambiguous manner that is unlikely to quell the demonstrations. No one denies the difficulty of announcing, much less carrying out, serious reforms in a country like Syria. Certainly, Mr. Assad would have to bargain with a variety of the country’s powerful established interests to get anything done. But he had the opportunity with this speech to build up a critical mass of public support for reform before a critical mass of opposition forms against him that would make anything he says too little, too late.
Sadly, he did not do so."
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